Please don’t speculate on things which you obviously have done no research on. Evolution is profoundly important in all fields of the life sciences (especially medicine). Moreover, it is the glue which holds the life sciences together. Too many things which we understand well today would make no sense if not for Darwinian evolutionary theory. To claim that evolution is relatively unimportant in the life sciences is the equivalent of saying that Newton’s laws or General Relativity are unimportant.

I think that Dawkins confuses “rational” with “material”, he is dogmatic and this discourages free and open discourse in my view. The underlying “innards” of science hasn’t changed all that much, but societies relation to it has.

Few ever stop to ask “So, what is actually so important about Dawkins and his evolution mantra?” because so far as science is concerned I think that evolution is greatly over-valued.

Have you noticed how most of those who obsess over evolution and strive to denegrate “religion” are not philosophers, physicists, or mathematicians? Yet these pursuits have and are far closer to the issues that Dawkins lectures us all about.

Dawkins is a scientists with a small “s”, he overstates the relevance to modern though and science of the whole evolution doctrine.

I question why anyone really needs to pay much attention to evolution, it is an aspect of speculative theoretical biology that when all said and done, is pretty unimportant, I mean would any of these professions suffer if they were never taught evolution:

0 – Medicine
0 – Chemistry
0 – Physics
0 – Enginerring
0 – Psychiatry
0 – Anthropology

I would argue “No”, very few practical fields need pay any attention to “origins”, Dawkins like to many other overstate the signficance f Darwin and then use this to promote a social agenda.

I think that irrespective of ones personal theological beliefs Dawkins needs to be challenged and challenged very seriously.

As a Prof. of the “Public Understanding of Science” he not only frequently presents unsound arguments, he is actually misrepresenting science.

By applying the term “scientific” to his arguments, he implies a certain credibility that in actuality is unwarranted.

My own irritation over these matters has led me to devote some time to a new blog:

http://dawkinswatch.blogspot.com/

I will strive to not personally debate too much in this blog, but rather catalog and discuss what I see as serious weaknesses in his arguments on a range of topics.

I have not placed any restriction on who may comment either.

SF is rooted in a belief in a better tomorrow. Those of us who read have (it seems) mostly given up our belief in a better tomorrow and have convinced ourselves that ‘progress’ is, after all, nothing more than a better mousetrap. We don’t like where we’re going so we look to where we have been for comfort. Which isn’t to say we can’t derive a better vision of the next step by a better understanding of the last one.

I shall continue to read (and try to write) both types, country and western.

I don’t care what Dawkins (or anyone else says) What I do care about is him (or anyone else) believing they have the right to shout so loudly that they drown out the voices of anyone whose life experience doesn’t match his. Nobody elected him God.

http://www.deepgenre.com/wordp...../community

David Louis Edelman, a new upcoming SF author on the scene disagrees, arguing that the opposite has been true in his experience. That he has found the existing, established SF community welcoming and helpful.

While Ursula le Guin writes a wry piece about the lot of the genre writer, specifically a fantasy writer in the eyes of the mainstream literary set.

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-OpenLetter.html

This piece also has a connection with the SFWA (in relation to the SFWA’s anti e-piracy drive) due to Le Guin’s anger at it being posted elsewhere complete, by Cory Doctorow, without her permission and in breach of her copyright.

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-OpenLetter.html

You could also say that it is science-fiction writers and popularizers themselves that have helped bring about this “rationality” boom. Asimov was a jack-of-all-trades and an avid atheist. Douglas Adams (arguably the most creative and original SF writer) was also an avid atheist and mocked religion constantly in his books. In fact most sci-fi fiction, based on a futuristic earth’s history, generally portray those societies as rational and religion as either dead or nearly so.

So how is it that a rationalist like Dawkins can negatively affect the sci-fi market by advocating the worldviews that most sci-fi advocates? So your argument is interesting but way off base.

http://comment.independent.co......340034.ece

and Terry Eagleton

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

do a good job, in different ways, of highlighting the limitations of Dawkins and the supremacy of would-be rationality, pure reason and empiricism.

As Howard Jacobson put it: ‘Nothing like an unimaginative scientist to get non-believers running back to God’!

I would contest the notion that fantasy is ‘not much better now’, Maureen. There has been a noticeable exodus of SF writers over to fantasy (rather like there was an exodus of horror writers over to fantasy at an earlier time), the latest being Kevin J Anderson, about to embark upon a fantasy sequence.

George R R Martin, known for his SF and horror, the most prominent and perhaps most influential fantasy writer – in epic terms – of recent times is a false trail, because Martin has always been writing the stuff. Writers like Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie and I would argue Greg Keyes (although he is more advanced and assured as a writer in his own right and is not really given his due) to name but a few, as well as whatever other influences they may have, took their cue from Martin’s witty, gritty, expletive laden fantasy.

Another branch is perched upon by China Miéville among others and most recently Hal Duncan, in what has been termed the ‘New Weird’ – finding inspiration from Gormenghast and Gloriana and the like and at loggerheads with anything that smacks of the Tolkiensque. (I detest and contest China Miéville’s statements on Tolkien but that’s another thread!) The fact that there is such contention at least points to real life in the genre.

Perhaps with SF, the extraordinary technological surge, especially of communication technology in the – literally – last few years may have deluged us with the notion that we are in fact already living the future and projections of it in prose now take on a (false) redundancy.

One other factor may be in play: while at its worst fantasy can be mawkish and sentimental, SF can still be too much head. A novel is an art form after all and if it leans too far towards abstracting ideas may be admired but not much warmed to.

We like to identify, however one may argue the identification may perhaps be, for all fiction is only a representation of flesh and blood reality.

I think it comes back to something Mark effectively said: you’ve still got to place flesh and blood people at the centre of it all.

Fantasy seems to be more successful at this than SF right now, as the success of Martin and writers partly taking their cue from him who are enjoying current success seem to show.

Regarding science fiction, It may be something of a sad irony that a genre which has given us so much good stuff often highlighting how humans may become consumed by the technology they spawn, may in itself also have – one hopes temporarily – become something of a victim to it.

A couple years ago, I checked out the latest greatest Best of collection, and none of the stories were much good. Even the Vernor Vinge was just barely passable. Also, it was pretty clear that the authors were not particularly interested in any readership except people exactly like them. On top of all that, they were depressing in the main. Amazingly enough, I don’t want to buy science fiction so that I can be simultaneously bored, depressed, and sneered at.

Problem is, fantasy’s not much better right now.

So yeah, there’s a few writers who seem to do consistent good and interesting work, and I’ve added a few to my list. But I’ve also had to subtract a lot of folks who used to do good work, and have lost most of my trust in others. On the whole, the chances of picking a new book up off the shelf and finding it in any way pleasing to me… well, it’s pretty low. So I save my money by going to the library, even though that deprives me of the ability to throw all these collections of apathetic prose against the wall.

OTOH, it’s very cheap to read the classics online, and it’s a lot easier to get epic poetry than it used to be. So I tend to read stuff like that instead.

“Up-Wing Priorites” (PDF)
http://www.box.net/shared/static/ay9lub60ha.pdf

People today remember these nonsensical predictions and forecasts for life in the 21st Century, and they no longer find them credible when charlatans like Ray Kurzweil make similar claims for the radical transformation of the human condition in 20+ years.

The rather large proportion of atheist, rationalist SF writers (many of whom are working scientists) and readers would seem to strain the tenuous thread you’re drawing. Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut might have had something to say about it.

What Dawkins rails against is the making of important (political, personal, medical) decisions based on irrational, nonsensical, hokum. Dawkins isn’t anti-imagination. It takes plenty of imagination to do science. I don’t care for his writing, but there should be nothing controversial about a man who challenges frauds and witchdoctors in the *real* world.

I’m a professional artist, a small-time musician, a tremendous reader of SF, and I also happen to believe in reason and objectivity.

One’s ability to reason objectively has no connection to one’s ability to imagine, or to enjoy silly notions as part of entertainment.

Quite right about Dawkins. We laugh at the gentlemen of the Royal Society for saying they knew everything that we shall ever know about science back in the 19th century, but the hardcore rationalist/skeptics of our present day seem to be walking into exactly the same trap.

If SF writers and publishers accepted this, they’d be able to crossover to a mainstream audience more effectively.

I know here in the States science literacy is failing (if you can believe tests and statistics on the matter), and that has to have some impact. The sci-fi utopias are all gone, so there’s little feel good in science. I think society has finally recognized that progress isn’t free or cheap.

And there must be more. When I was in high school, I played fantasy rpgs and read a few fantasy novels, but I read a lot of science fiction. Now, the only sci-fi I read is older works by authors like Andre Norton. Good adventure stuff that’s practically fantasy in space-age trappings.

For me, sci-fi lost me when I felt like a lot of authors were loving sciece more than story, and at a time in my life when I wanted to experience truths in story, whatever type of story that may be, and not possibilities and ideas. I just haven’t come back.

Sci-fi has really had a rennaisance in tv and movies, though. So I’m thinking there must be a disconnect somewhere.

Oh, and marketing. Sci-fi is marketed toward the hardcore crowd to keep them around, but books with spaceships on them and no people look very nerdy and cheesy at the same time.

Have to say, you are absolutely on-target about Dawkins. I hate the man passionately, not because I’m opposed to Atheism, but because his particular attitude about belief exhibits the same sort of one-true-wayism that a fundamentalist preacher has. He seems not only a hypocrite, but an arrogant jackass.

I think society needs SF, although it may not know it. I feel like SF Movies and other non-print media are speaking more to the people these days, (my recent experience of a SF-themed concept album that rocked my world helps my feelings here) and that’s not surprising to me, somehow.